Manitoba's Green Party made big gains in some neighbourhoods

Manitoba's Green Party established itself as a force to be reckoned with in Wolseley's southern half in the last provincial election, a CBC analysis shows.

CBC News mapped the election results of every polling station in each of the 57 constituencies in the 2016 provincial election that saw Brian Pallister's Progressive Conservatives win a landslide majority government.

Although NDP incumbent Rob Altemeyer eked out a victory over Green candidate David Nickarz, mapping the voters results of each polling station paints a picture of a divided constituency. Nearly every voting area in the southern part of Wolseley was won by the Greens, while the neighbourhood blocks adjacent to and North of Portage Avenue maintained their support for the NDP.

Political analyst Christopher Adams said many middle class residents in Wolseley saw a failing NDP and decided to look elsewhere.

"Some of those voters, they didn't know where to go and they weren't going to go to the Progressive Conservatives, so many of them went to the greens," he said.

David Nickarz, who lost by only 384 votes, says this time around, his party overcame what he calls the "legitimacy wall."

"When James Beddome ran in 2011, he had almost every person at the door tell him 'Oh, I'd vote for you if I thought you could win,' and he had so many people tell him that, that he would probably have won if they'd all voted for him," he said. "I didn't get any of that."

Manitoba Green Party leader James Beddome says the party performed well in other areas including St. James and Fort Garry-Riverview where they won a handful of polls outright.

"That, in itself, shows the constant forward momentum. Obviously I'd love to see Greens in the Legislature right now, but you know, we're not going anywhere, we're going to keep on persisting on the good fight," he said.

Slow eroding of North-South divide

Adams says that the mapped results illustrates the extent to which Pallister's PC's were successful in gaining ground in NDP territory.

"The data [...] really shows that old traditional North-South division in Winnipeg has really disappeared," he said.

Adams highlights how certain property developments have allowed the PC's to slowly infiltrate some inner-city constituencies, such as Point Douglas.

"As we see more urban middle-class and upper middle-class developments, we'll see more of these blue islands [in the inner city]," he said.

'Significant' shift in Transcona

Before the spring election, the constituency of Transcona had only ever fallen out of NDP hands on one occasion, in 1988, when Sharon Carstairs's Liberals won the seat. The fact that PC candidate Blair Yakimoski demonstrated strong universal support throughout the community by winning 48 of the 51 polling stations is a sign of change, says Adams.

"That's quite quite significant for a working class neighbourhood ... outside the CN shop. That's one of the strongest NDP areas in the province," he said.

Elections Manitoba made the voting area digital boundary files available to CBC News on the condition that this article was accompanied by the following disclaimers:

• The voting area boundaries and associated maps relate only to the 41th general election of April 2016. Data for these maps were current to April 2016. All information was believed to be accurate at the time, but is not guaranteed to be without error.
• Voting area boundaries and associated maps are prepared for internal operational purposes by Elections Manitoba.
• Voting area boundaries for subsequent and previous elections will differ from those displayed here. As such, these voting area maps cannot be used for comparative purposes with other elections.
• Electoral division boundaries are reviewed every 10 years under Manitoba's Electoral Divisions Act. The current boundaries were set in 2008 by the Electoral Divisions Boundaries Commission.
• Not all voting areas relate to a geographical location on the map. Votes cast using the following voting methods are not related to a location on the map: advance, homebound, absentee, personal security and institutional. For that reason, map-based results will not tally with the total number of votes cast within an electoral division.

Notes and methodology:

• Results do not include votes cast through advance, homebound, absentee, personal security and institutional voting, as those results are not associated with specific voting areas.
• Voting area results for the 2016 Manitoba provincial elections were provided by Elections Manitoba.
• In cases where multiple polling stations were located within one voting area, the results were merged together and presented as an overall result for that voting area.
• Analysis and calculations performed by Jacques Marcoux, CBC News.